ANXIETY DISORDERS/WORKING THROUGH THE RECOVERY: BACK TO BASICS
Understanding setbacks
Setbacks are unavoidable. In fact, the more we have the better! Each setback teaches us more about ourselves and our disorder, and strengthens and refines our management skills. To work through to recovery we need to understand why setbacks happen.
As an example, our threshold to stress may now be at level zero. Practising our management skills will raise our threshold to stress to level one. We then experience our first breakthrough— we feel no fear or anxiety. This brings a complete clarity of thought and a total sense of freedom. Any stress higher than level one will be enough to start the whole vicious cycle again. Inevitably, this happens and we have a setback.
It is not so much the stress itself which causes the setback as how we think about it. When a stress is higher than our threshold, we automatically slip back into our old way of thinking. Anxiety and attacks follow. We become so caught up in it that we are not even aware that we have fallen back into the cycle. Only when we become aware of it can we do something about it.
Identifying the stress will show why the setback has happened. Whatever the stress is, it will be higher than we can tolerate at this point. If we are working from zero, identification is not difficult, as the normal day-to-day stress will trigger the automatic cycle of thinking.
When we become aware of why it has happened, the next step is to resolve any issues relating to the stress and to let the setback happen. Our threshold to stress will continue to rise as long as we continue with management skills. We will then reach level two. Any stress higher than level two will trigger a set back. Again we go through the principles outlined above. This is when we need to have patience. This is the working-through process.
Steps in the working-through process:
• Isolate the stress/es
• Be aware of how we are thinking about them
• Resolve any issues relating to the stress
• Let go of anxiety-producing thoughts
• Let the setback happen
• Continue with meditation
• Continue to work with our thinking
If we are working from level zero, the first breakthrough usually only lasts for about an hour as the daily stress will trigger the automatic way of thinking. With continued practice of the above, our threshold to stress will continue to rise. We will begin to experience days and then weeks of clarity and freedom. When we have a setback after these periods, everything does seem much worse and more hopeless. It isn’t. Only the comparison between these two ways of being makes it appear so. We will reach the point where there are no more setbacks. Clarity of thought and the sense of freedom will then become our automatic way of thinking and feeling.
If we are not sure why we are having a setback, we can write a list of everything that is currently happening in our life. There may be family problems, a difficult financial or work situation, children home on school holidays. There can be many reasons.
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ÑHILDREN’S SLEEP PROBLEMS/BUILDING THE BASICS: SLEEP ASSOCIATION
The conditions present while going to sleep are called “sleep associations” They are the things, events, people, and anything else that might surround induce sleep.
We all tend to look forward to, and even depend on, the same, or a a similar set of sleep conditions being there for us each time we want l asleep. These are different and personal for each of us. They usually ir things like a dark room, a favorite side of the bed, or that special pillow.
Sleep associations help us get to sleep. Routines and rituals ã important part of most people’s lives—but nowhere are they more common, and more important, than when they center around sleep. They seem to help bridge the gap between day and night, wakeful activity and the unknowns of sleep. Even as adults—logical, rational, and usually wanting more sleep—we go through certain steps to be sure everything is “right” for sleep.
I can’t go to sleep without reading for a while.
I set a glass of water on the nightstand, plump up my pillow, check the alarm twice, and then relax.
Children learn to go to sleep in the conditions that their parents set up.
They learn to expect that old blanket, the night light, the music box, or their special pillow.
Kevin was always rocked to sleep. We made sure that he was fast asleep when we laid him down; otherwise he would cry. If he woke up later, he would cry until we rocked him again.
Since adults are generally in charge of their own lives, they are, theoretically, also in charge of their own sleeping conditions. Imagine what would happen if they were not. Suppose that the parent noted above, when awakened by a windstorm, was all out of water—or, worse yet, discovered someone had hidden her alarm clock. How could she possibly get back to sleep worrying that she might not wake up on time?
Children often find themselves in such frustrating situations. They wake during the night to find that the conditions they went to sleep with somehow changed during the night.
Remember that arousals are a normal part of sleep cycles—a time when we check to be sure everything is as it should be before we fall back to sleep. How lonely a child who has fallen asleep at the breast must feel to discover that it is no longer nearby! The bed must certainly feel less comfortable than Daddy’s arms or the rocking chair. Certainly calling out or crying is a logical, understandable, reaction—an attempt to regain the conditions favorable to sleep.
Difficulty falling asleep and frequent waking are common sleep problems. They may be connected. When a child cannot get to sleep, he will also not be able to get back to sleep. His sleep associations can be the root of it all. Even if you do not suspect this to be your child’s problem, it is important to look at it. Developing independent sleep associations is also a preventive measure.
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BREATHLESSNESS – PROBLEMS WITH HEART
If your heart is the problem there are pills or injections which can make it work more efficiently and also ones to help you pass some of the fluid that has built up in the lungs out through the urine. Your doctor should also find out why it is not working properly— important possibilities to check in people with cancer include heart damage due to adriamycin and fluid building up in the sac that surrounds the heart (the pericardial cavity). If the latter is the problem, your symptoms can be quickly improved by draining the fluid out through a needle or fine plastic tube put in through the chest wall under local anaesthetic. The needle does not go into the heart itself, just the fluid-filled sac around it. Fluid in the pleural cavity (outside the lungs) can also be drained in a similar way to produce a rapid improvement in your breathing.
If fluid has built up in either your pericardial or pleural spaces, cancer cells growing on their linings is the most likely reason, but other possible reasons include infection and bleeding. The fluid can be examined under the microscope to find out why it has formed. If it is due to cancer, ways of trying to stop it reforming are the same as for fluid in the abdominal cavity (ascites).
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